With decent web frameworks for Python and Ruby writing web applications is a real pleasure. You no longer have to clutter your screen with ugly Java/PHP/whatever mess, you can even write AJAX stuff directly in yourlanguage of choice (which is a hack on its own, but we can’t argue with so called de facto standard), so your UI needs can be mostly satisfied.

But there comes another threat – it’s called Flex (no, not the GNU lexer). On the surface it may look really nice, but under the hood some serious code bloat is going on. I’m not saying this particular code is bad (it is quite nice actually), but the general pattern is clear – lots, LOTS of typing. Effect – big amounts of code to read with intentions of the implementor hidden inside. I believe code can be kept clean. I wonder how in earth Bruce Eckel, proponent of Python, man who not so long ago wrote that this kind of code bloat costs time and money could support this technology. We can write (and maintain) code with text editors. With emerge of dynamic languages this trend was finally going upstream. Today, Flex compared to Ruby or Python just seems backwards. So please don’t use Flex. Otherwise we will again have to come up with pieces of middleware for automatic ActionScript generation and that’s no fun. We don’t need another hack for the web. And no excuses.